Are You There Alone?: The Unspeakable Crime of Andrea Yates FROM THE PUBLISHER
As a journalist, Suzanne O'Malley began covering the murders of Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary Yates hours after their mother, Andrea Yates, drowned them in their suburban Houston home in June 2001. Over twenty-four months, O'Malley interviewed or witnessed the sworn testimony of more than a hundred participants in this drama, including Yates herself; her husband, Rusty Yates; their families; attorneys; the personnel of the Harris County district attorney's and sheriff's offices; medical staff; friends; acquaintances; and expert witnesses. O'Malley argues persuasively that under less extraordinary circumstances, a mentally ill woman would have been quietly offered a plea bargain and sent to an institution under court supervision. But on March 12, 2002, Andrea Yates was found guilty of the murders of three of her five children. She is currently serving a life sentence and will not be eligible for parole until 2041. O'Malley's exclusive personal communications with Andrea Yates and her interviews with Rusty Yates allow her to offer fully realized portrayals of people at the center of this horrifying case. In "Are You There Alone?" O'Malley makes a critical contribution to our understanding of mental health issues within the criminal justice system.
FROM THE CRITICS
USA Today
This riveting book puts a human face on a larger social issue. What happens when the violent actions of an improperly medicated mentally ill person intersect with the legal system? Who bears the responsibility? — Dierdre Donahue
The New York Times
The account of the events leading up to the murders in 'Are You There Alone?' spotlights one adverse circumstance after the next, beginning with the couple's determination to have as many children as possible, their claustrophobically small living quarters and their friendship with a charismatic, fire-and-brimstone-style born-again preacher, Michael Woroniecki, who constantly warned Andrea of the danger of becoming too worldly and raising Satan-infected children. Add to this mix a preposterous series of medical misdiagnoses and wrong medications, and the Yates family was just plain doomed. O'Malley's tally of wrong-headed choices made by the Yateses, the medical community and the courts grows increasingly absurd.
— Paula Friedman
Publishers Weekly
Andrea Yates's horrific murders of her five small children drowning them one by one in their bathtub remains one of the most shocking crimes of recent years. In this overly detailed retelling, investigative journalist O'Malley has transformed herself in the popular current style from observer into participant, albeit with ample justification. O'Malley, who had written for TV's Law and Order, was suspicious when a prosecution witness, attempting to establish that Yates acted with premeditation, testified that the television show had recently aired an episode in which a mother killed her children and then escaped punishment by asserting a postpartum depression defense. Sure enough, no such episode was ever made, and O'Malley led the Yates defense team to rebuttal evidence that came too late to affect the guilty verdict. The author asserts that Yates was never properly diagnosed and relies on psychiatric opinions that claim, tragically, that a different diagnosis and appropriate treatment could have prevented her devastating actions. The writing sometimes jars ("To say this day sucked didn't begin to cover it," O'Malley says of the fatal day), but some new information and heartbreaking extracts from correspondence the author received from Yates add interest. More analysis would have been welcome, even if the nature of the murders seems to necessarily render a satisfactory understanding forever beyond human capacity. (Feb. 2) FYI: O'Malley's reporting on the case appeared in the New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine and on Dateline NBC. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A blow-by-blow-and many times the blows feel physical-account of Andrea Yates's murder of her five children and the trial that followed. O'Malley, who reported on the case for several magazines and for NBC's Dateline, starts with the murders and includes a long interview between Yates and a homicide detective that describes the crime in detail. It is stunning and very difficult to get beyond, as she details the drowning one after another of five children, who did not go gently. But then O'Malley prods the reader onward to consider the fundamentalist religious beliefs of Yates and her husband and how they were processed in Yates's deeply disturbed brain. She was a suicidal depressive who had previously taken an overdose of pills and tried to slit her throat, who had been hospitalized four times before the murders, who believed she was possessed by Satan, and who was operating on unmonitored, on-again, off-again doses of Effexor, Wellbutrin, Cogentin, Haldol, and Restoril. Through interviews with doctors and Yates's husband Rusty, O'Malley tries to assemble a portrait of her subject's mental makeup. Whether Yates suffered from postpartum psychosis or schizophrenia or bipolar illness, "she fit the definition of legal insanity-even in Texas," noted one neurologist, though she was found mentally competent to stand trial. Before the crime, she was not given the level of treatment necessary, nor did her doctor spend enough time with someone who was obviously very sick. This consideration of the psychological issues is set against the backdrop of the trial, during which O'Malley herself played a role in disrupting the prosecution's attempt to prove premeditation. It ended with a life sentence forYates, and in case anyone feels she got off lightly, the author reminds us that "a majority of women who kill their children kill themselves within five years." Well-turned portrait of a ghastly situation in which everyone lost, and of the complex questions that arise when the law must deal with mental illness. Agent: Mort Janklow/Janklow & Nesbit
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